Sister Nora Nash uses her portfolio of stocks to pressure corporations to improve their business practices.
Photograph: Mark Makela for the Guardian

Sister Nora Nash is on a mission.

The challenge she faces is as vast as corporate greed and as urgent as affordable medicine.

Her goals include keeping families out of shelters, poison out of drinking water and children out of sweatshops.

And the attire is strictly boardroom.

As director of the corporate social responsibility office for the Sisters of St Francis of Philadelphia, an order of about 400 Roman Catholic nuns located south-west of the city, Nash has worked for years to get the hundreds of companies that populate the nuns’ bulging stock portfolio to behave better.

Her exploits have made her an unlikely face of conscientious capitalism, a trespasser in the kingdom of profit whose tangles with corporate boards have been chronicled in the Financial Times and acclaimed in the world of ethical investing.

The Sisters of St Francis worked for decades in Catholic schools and hospitals in Philadelphia, and their missionary work abroad continues today, with latrine construction in Haiti and other projects. “We have a mission to be of service to all aspects and segments of society,” Nash says.

But Nash’s current path leads inside of some of the world’s most exclusive boardrooms. Supported by her partners at the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, Nash has met with CEOs including Jamie Dimon (JP Morgan Chase), Brian Moynihan (Bank of America), Lloyd Blankfein (Goldman Sachs), Marilyn Hewson (Lockheed Martin), John Christmann (Apache Corporation) and Thomas Fanning (Southern Company).

Her vow of poverty has not prevented Nash from mastering the subtleties of securities regulations

Nash and her deputy, Tom McCaney, average about 90 actions – company dialogues or shareholder resolutions – per year.

“I dialogue with Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Boeing,” said Nash. “With the tobacco people. We do a lot of work in the oil and gas industry, because of the fracking and pipelines. Tom does all the health work, healthier food. I do climate change and of course a lot with banks. We are spread in a lot of areas.”

In an age when corporations are first in line for tax cuts but seemingly unaccountable when an economy sinks or an election tilts, Nash has sought leverage by joining the one group that big companies still have to listen to: shareholders.

Owning shares gives Nash an audience where her message might otherwise be unwelcome: shareholders can confront executives at annual meetings. They can form voting blocs to demand transparency. And they can draw corporate leaders into dialogues that sometimes lead to change.

“We own corporations in every sector,” said Nash, who welcomed the Guardian recently to the imposing stone convent where she did her novitiate almost six decades before. The building’s grand dome overshadows a cemetery where Mother Francis, the German immigrant who founded the order in 1855, is buried.

Nash describes the companies the sisters invest in: ‘We have reminded them about their commitment to economic access and some sort of hand up for those who are poor.’ Photograph: Mark Makela for the Guardian

Mother Francis started the order to serve the poor, a mission that continues. But Sister Nora’s piece of the ministry has a thoroughly modern twist.

Nash and McCaney have engaged with the biggest US banks and airlines; with retailers such as Walmart, Target and Sears; with gun makers such as Sturm, Ruger and American Outdoor Brands (formerly Smith & Wesson); and with pharmaceutical companies from Pfizer to Merck to Johnson & Johnson.

The goal is not confrontation, Nash said, but to work together with companies to encourage stronger environmental policies, better product safety, cleaner supply chains and less preying on customers.

“I would encourage companies to go back and look at their ethical standards, and look at the consumer,” Nash said. “They have a commitment to the consumer.”

Her vow of poverty has not prevented Nash, who migrated to the United States in the 1950s from Ireland, from mastering the subtleties of securities regulations.

Filing the kind of shareholder resolution that can put pressure on a board of directors requires ownership of at least $2,000 in company stock – a hurdle the nuns appear to have no problem clearing.

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“Our portfolio was established in the early 80s, and it was established for retirement, and also good works,” Nash said. “We do a good bit of community development and we are very much a part of impact investing.

“It’s been doing very well, but I wouldn’t be allowed to give you numbers.”

Nash recently nailed down a commitment from Wells Fargo, which last year was fined a record $185m for creating millions of fake bank and credit card accounts, to hold a vote at its 2018 annual meeting on publishing a report on fraudulent activity within the company.

“They’ve got to get to the root causes,” said Nash, who met earlier this year with the Wells Fargo CEO, Timothy Sloan. “Where were the auditors, where were the board members? How could it have gone on for so long and not been found? That’s what we’re pressing for.”

Nash runs her effort from Our Lady of Angels convent, which occupies a hilltop campus with views of the Philadelphia skyline and Delaware river valley. When a recent visit was interrupted by a fire alarm, dozens of nuns, many with white hair and comfortable sweaters, filed out past a seated statue of St Francis reading a Bible.

Sisters of St Francis line up outside during a fire drill. Photograph: Mark Makela for the Guardian

Misconduct by banks can create human needs as urgent as those found in the more traditional areas of the nuns’ ministry, Nash said.

“When it comes down to it, we’re all human,” she said. “And our humanity has to speak, and we have reminded them about their commitment to economic access and some sort of hand up for those who are poor.”

At lunchtime, the nuns congregate in a wide cafeteria for chicken and salad, served buffet-style and eaten at round tables where talk runs to politics and the weather, the way it does elsewhere.

McCaney had recently returned from a meeting in Cincinnati, Ohio, with Kroger, the country’s largest supermarket chain, to talk about how the company vets its international suppliers of products such as seafood and cocoa.

“They’re just doing so much,” McCaney said of Kroger. “They’ve tripled the number of audits they do in their supply chain. They’re a great example of somebody who saw a weakness and, with enough pushing, they deserve a lot of credit for the advances they made.”

Kroger’s communications chief, Jessica Adelman, said the company shared the nuns’ concern with responsible sourcing and human rights. It helped, she said, that from the corporation’s perspective, the nuns were easy to work with.

“They are very open, they are very respectful, very eager to listen and learn, which again makes it very easy for us to spend substantial time with them because we can have that candid dialogue,” Adelman said. “Also they do understand a lot of the nuances of a publicly traded company.”

Not every corporation responds to the call for partnership. Nash singled out gun manufacturers, who currently are trying to ignore an approach by Sister Judy Byron, an Adrian Dominican nun based in Seattle who is a partner of Nash’s.

After holding shares in Sturm Ruger, American Outdoor Brands and one retailer, Dick’s sporting goods, for one year, Byron sent a letter asking the companies to participate in a meeting about product safety, political lobbying and developing a response to the epidemic of mass shootings in the United States.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t hear from the companies,” said Byron. “And when we called there was a message machine, and the calls weren’t returned.”

“We own that company. We own a little piece of each of these companies. And as responsible investors, we feel a need to speak up.”

The next step, Byron said, is to craft a resolution that will pass the Securities and Exchange Commission and be included at the companies’ next annual meetings.

“We’re preparing now to file a shareholder resolution with Dick’s Sporting Goods, and then in the new year with the other two.”

For Nash, shareholder activism is the latest stage in a lifelong mission.

“As a sister of St Francis, I can speak to the power of money because I don’t have any money, as such,” said Nash. “But I have an obligation as a human being to see that justice and rights prevail.”

Correction: This article has been updated to reflect that the Sisters of St Francis of Philadelphia comprises about 400 nuns, not 160 as originally stated.